Tuscaloosa, AL Business Licensing & Operations: Tattoo & Body Modification (2026)

Sec. 25-31 defines a 'tattoo establishment' as any business that places permanent designs, letters, symbols, or figures upon or under the skin with ink using needles or other instruments, and it folds body piercing shops into the same definition by including any business that provides an opening in the body for the purpose of inserting jewelry or other decoration. The commercial principal use table at Sec. 25-101 permits tattoo establishments by right in the General Commercial (GC) and Highway Commercial (HC) districts and in planned development (PD) districts, but requires a special exception use permit from the zoning board of adjustment in the Light Industrial (IL) and General Industrial (IG) districts; it is not listed at all in the city's residential, institutional, or downtown districts.

ix layers a locational buffer on top of that district permission: no tattoo establishment may be located within 1,000 feet of another tattoo establishment, a casino/gambling hall, a check-cashing establishment, a school, a tobacco or vape shop, a liquor store, or a residential use located in a residential district. That same 1,000-foot buffer is mirrored, use by use, against sexually-oriented businesses, casinos, check-cashing stores, and tobacco or vape shops elsewhere in the same subsection, meaning several of Tuscaloosa's more tightly regulated commercial uses are all measured against each other, not just against tattoo parlors specifically.

A prospective tattoo shop operator has to check both the zoning district's use permissions and the straight-line distance to every one of those listed uses before signing a lease.